make you a star in my universe
by rose-tinted-bones
Summary: Cheesy power ballads, refrigerator light and dark, unruly hair across taupe eyes. A study of gold in repose. Keith doesn't want to admit that it's everything he's ever wanted. An end-game. Years later, through the fire, the blood and betrayal, it's the only truth he can still cling to.
1. Chapter 1

**make you a star in my universe**

* * *

Cheesy power ballads, refrigerator light and dark, unruly hair across taupe eyes. A study of gold in repose. Keith doesn't want to admit that it's everything he's ever wanted. An end-game.

Years later, through the fire, the blood and betrayal, it's the only truth he can still cling to.

* * *

 _if you love me, with all of your heart  
if you love me, I'll make you a star in my universe  
you'll spend every day, shining your light my way_

 _-For You;_ Angus & Julia Stone

It starts with a touch – a light pat on his shoulder. Light enough not to notice. Light enough not to care. But he does. Keith does. It's impossible not to – not when, well…not when it's _him._

Shiro gives him a smile, just a curve at the end of a line – miniscule, cast in sunlight – and it's enough. Understanding. Sympathetic. Kind. Enough for Keith to loosen the tension of his shoulders, enough for him to release the breath he's been holding. There's this little thing – a little, tiny, funny thing – about holding your breath in until you're teetering off the edge of explosion, and a small touch – an outside force with the gentleness of rain – is enough to deflate you from the inside.

It's a startling, not so startling epiphany – how Shiro's smile is a knife-sharp point on rubber stretched thin.

There's a rumor – a sibilant hiss slithering through the cracks and holes, over cutlery and impeccably-buttoned uniforms – of an escort mission, to Pluto's far side, on the small moon. Keith would be deaf not to have heard of it. The idea has some merit, some small grain of truth – the Galaxy Garrison was good at aiming for past excellence, after all.

The tuft of Shiro's hair – angling forward and into his eyes, rebellious – shifts in the wind, the golden glimmer of the setting sun painting shadows across his face. Greyed-out cuts and lines, tinged in scarlet. Keith's clumsy with words, stringing metaphors, crisscrossed, in his mouth. All that comes out is a whiff of air, the best he can conjure today or on any other day.

He wishes he could even voice one – a sentence or a clause, maybe even a fragment. The thought is feather-light, sinks into his stomach with the weight of a planet. He wishes for a lot of things, he surmises. It's not something he wants to admit.

There are a lot of things Keith doesn't want to admit.

"Wouldn't it be great, though?" Shiro asks, baritone edging off the cliff of a note. Keith looks up at him, meeting his gaze and the flailing of his blood echoes in the skip of his heart beat. The sand dunes beyond sift, the winds trailing, glittering in the afternoon light across a fire-touched sky. The curve of Shiro's lips are hopeful, the crinkles by his eyes brimming with want. Overhead, invisible, a million stars reach down with gentle hands. "Not everybody gets to go on escort missions. Imagine how it'd feel like."

The excitement is simmering, Keith notes, as Shiro tilts his head up and looks upward. The curve of his jaw runs to draw lines downwards, the prominence of collarbones peeking over the neckline of his shirt. His skin is tanned – warm, invigorated, alive – painted amber, the slight bulge of veins moving along with every breath.

"Yeah. Imagine." He agrees – it's enough. The spark. Those two words. Infinitesimal. Short. Unremarkable. The grin Shiro throws his way, in response, blinds him.

Adventurous. Bright. Argent. Those are things Keith uses to describe Shiro. Words beyond the things he wants them to mean, the things Keith struggles to say, to put into action. Always reaction. He wonders how long until Shiro grows tired of the silence, the absence of a response. He's stayed far longer than most – far longer than anything he's ever had.

 _Don't go._ The crimson of Shiro's speeder turns to vermillion in the setting sun light. The lapels of his jacket sway in the wind. Keith presses his thumbnail against his finger hard enough to hurt. _I don't want you to go._

* * *

Leaving is something Keith's used to.

Rejection is something he's learned to be content with.

Orphaned, he's learned to get by with nothing else but the skin on his back and the mindless, almost-insane mantra he's taught himself to recite in his head over and over and over. _This is enough._

"He's quiet and he keeps to himself. He's never been good being with people." It's the same thought, typed out in synonyms, dull – monotonous. The same look of dissatisfaction, glaring from different eyes and Keith simply glares back, as his hair grows longer, his limbs grow thicker and the years grow shorter. The children at the orphanage do not stay long, the faces change almost by the month. Keith remains, the only constant fixture next to the rickety cabinet with the broken leg and the molding door jamb with too many cuts, illegible writing and numbers by the side. "It might be…difficult to get him to open up. I wouldn't recommend, unless you're willing to see it through."

He flicks the pages, eyes noting the words but not really reading them. The edges of the paper are torn and folded, grubby finger prints and nonsensical ink marks in the margins. He's read the book so many times he can recite it, word-for-word, off the top of his head. It's not something that most people look for in a possible adoption.

Most want for bright-eyed laughter and sing-song voices. Nobody wants to hear him talk about celestial mechanics and gravity.

He's weightless in his own space, uncomfortable even in his own skin.

The rumble of an engine pulls his attention away from Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and he squints through the sheer fabric of the curtain and spies crimson. The man that steps in a few minutes later is tall, barely fits through the small door. The low light paints his eyes grey, and they gleam when he smiles.

Something catches fire in Keith's chest.

* * *

"Elbow." Shiro says, his voice short, slightly strained. Keith grunts and steps back, turning his body to the side and using the momentum to swing the bo staff at the other's head. Shiro nods in approval, raising his forearm and catching it by the nook of his guard. "Good."

Sweat is dripping into Keith's eyes, sharp, and his hair sticks to his skin. He's not panting yet, but he will be soon. Shiro uses the pause to counter with a sweep of his foot. He jumps, teeth gritted, and raises his staff as the other follows up with a jab of his wrist to the side of Keith's face.

Shiro is relentless, intense, during training. He doesn't allow a second of respite in the middle of a spar, giving it his all. Keith breathes and breathes and grunts as he tries to keep up, the Training Room silent save for the sound of skin against wood. Shiro doesn't slow down, doesn't pull his punches – he trains Keith like a man, allows him to know what it really is like in a fight – when it's not rough-housing and hallway brawls over a throwaway comment on dead parents and orphans. Keith can barely pin him down, strikes three out of ten and falls flat on his back, his own bo staff at his neck.

There's a grin on Shiro's lips – wolfish – and this close, with Shiro on his knee over Keith, it's almost sharp enough to cut him. The bead of sweat over his top lip glows under fluorescent, and Keith knows his ears are red for an entirely different reason altogether.

"Good." Shiro grunts, leaning back and standing up. He sets the staff to the side and reaches a hand out for him. Keith clears his throat and sits up, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Shiro's bare hand against his feels like a furnace. "You're reacting a lot faster. Just don't forget to—"

"Focus." Keith answers, rolling his eyes as he wipes the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. The corner of Shiro's lips pull up in a lopsided smile and he feels the other's fingers in his hair, ruffling them. Shiro's shirt is dripping with sweat, and in this lighting and angle, the shadows play off the panes of his arms.

He blinks, and feels Shiro's hand on his face, pushing the hair away from his eyes. The box in his chest trembles, and the lid creaks open a bit. The look on his face must be humorous – it'd be the only explanation for Shiro's twinkle-eyed laugh.

"Your hair's a bit long." The other notes, and Keith stills, unsure of what to do as Shiro's index finger threads through the hair at the side of his face, slowly pushes it away until it's over his ear. The ghost of a touch arcs through the skin and his tense jaw. "You want me to cut it for you again?"

Keith doesn't know what to make of the hopeful look on Shiro's face. It was just hair. When he rolls his eyes and says 'fine', he pretends to ignore the twinge of something painful, something wondrously – beautifully – painful in his chest as Shiro tilts his head, his smile returning. The hand by his ear turns to an arm around his shoulder – and Keith should complain about the sweaty limb over his neck, or the scent of sweat and rubber mixed with cedar—

He doesn't admit that he wants to press his face against the seam where Shiro's arm meets chest.

Icarus and the sun, all over again.

* * *

"Look, I know I messed up, okay? You don't have to fucking tell me." Keith bites out. He doesn't look up from his shoes, ignores the line of neatly pressed slacks and the concerned gaze he knows he'll see the moment he allows himself to be weak.

He doesn't know what's thrumming in his veins – if it's disappointment or rage, bitterness or just the deep-seated aching left by every person who's walked out on him, starting with mommy and daddy.

It was just…so stupid. It wasn't something he hasn't heard before. The sad, lonely orphanage boy that nobody wanted. The little crybaby with the dead parents. It's not like they were untrue.

He doesn't need to hear what went on inside the cadet colonel's office – he can already guess, remembering the frigid glare she sent his way. The cadet across him – some asshole named Jenkins – gave him the finger when he dared to look sideways and Keith glowered back, but he remembers the look of worry and concern on Shiro's face when he arrived at the call of the colonel, and Keith suddenly feels sick to his stomach.

Now alone – Jenkins inside the office – it's all he can do not to notice Shiro's presence beside him, tall but not overbearing, willing to respect the peripheries of what Keith can handle at any given moment and Keith's surprised the shame and disappointment hasn't started seeping off his skin like acid.

It was just—

He knows. He goddamn knows how the only reason Keith was here was because of Shiro, because Shiro took a chance on him and saw something – and he has no idea what that something is and it fucking _terrifies_ him.

"Keith—" Shiro starts, voice low, consoling. There's no harshness to the way his name sounds on Shiro's lips, no bite. He's grown so used to it thrown as a curse, a repugnance, streaked in rage. Shiro clothes his name with gentle hands and feather-light touches. Keith digs his nail deeper into his skin until he feels scarlet bloom.

And maybe because he's biting his lip too hard.

Or it's because the hair is in his face and it stings his eyes and he surreptitiously tries to get them to move away.

Or maybe it's because it's Shiro – the only person who ever seemed to have look past the surface and saw something worth keeping, regardless of how hard and impossible it is for Keith to believe.

There's movement – smooth, lithe – and Shiro's kneeling, a hand over Keith's – the one trembling, the one bleeding.

Shiro is silent and Keith has no idea what expression is running across those features, but the fingers over his are slowly – tenderly – prying them open, inspecting the damage. Shiro's thumb traces the edge by the line of red and it takes Keith a moment to note how smaller his hand is compared to the other, the color of his skin against the tan, the wispy motion of the thumb on the abused skin and each stroke sending tendrils and lines of heat and lighting to every nerve in his body.

"You should just send me back." The words are spoken through gritted teeth, and Keith bites his lip and tries not to blink – not even when the lines of his shoes and everything else starts to blur. Shiro's hand stills in its ministrations. "I'm just gonna fuck up again."

"Keith…" Shiro says – no, _whispers,_ and—just—God, does he have to do that? Does he have to say his own name like it's some prayer? He can't stop the gooseflesh running up his arms or the tight, too-tight squeezing of his chest or the sharp sting behind his eyes.

 _I'm sorry._ He wants to say. He knows he has to. He doesn't know what the colonel said, but it's no secret that only Shiro's outstanding reputation kept Keith in the Garrison.

But the words are stuck in his throat, frozen. He's long lost sight of how to scrounge them up from the glacial depths.

"Hey, hey, look at me." Shiro starts, his other hand on Keith's chin, the thumb sweeping along the line of his jaw and circling about the growing bruise. He forgets to breathe, fights the ache – the urge – to press his face against Shiro's hand and forget everything – every ugly, hateful thing said about him, every reminder of his parents' death, every mark that pushed him down a road all by himself. "Keith, please."

And it just takes two words – _Keith, please_ – for all his walls, his defenses to come tumbling down, allowing Shiro to angle his face to meet his gaze.

And—

Oh, _God,_ the look in those eyes—the worry, the utter heartbreak, the wide-eyed rose-taupe gaze roving over every plane, every valley of his face. The hand moves from his chin to his cheek, and it's just—

The intimacy. The wonderful, wonderful pounding of his heart. The image is permanently emblazoned, engraved, embossed – things that start with 'em' that he can't care to find out – across his mind and over his heart because it's the closest thing, the closest he'll ever get to Shiro. A sun sewn into the tapestry of gentle smiles and scarlet-tinged taupe.

"I'm not giving up on you." The admission is quiet, but true. The surety – the confidence – is riveting. Factual. Shiro's eyes aren't hard – they're unblinking, but not unkind. Unflinching. Unfaltering. That's what they are.

His lips are drawn into a determined line, immovable.

And it's that—most of all. It's that faith, Shiro's faith, in _him,_ of all people. Fuck-up, orphan, failure. Keith is every one of those and Shiro chose him – believed in him and it's not possible—or it is—because Shiro is looking at him with steel. It's not just something he said for the moment, to dull the blow. It's—

When Shiro says it like that, then he must – if only a little – believe it. When Shiro says that he's not giving up, then, just for a bit – a small part – must be _true._ And…that's just stupid, right? Stupid and—

 _You're what I believe._ The thought comes to him – comet-fast, sun-hot and plain fucking honest. It hits Keith like a ton of bricks, an entire avalanche and it causes the first – the very first fall, the line of liquid warmth down his cheek. That's all Shiro, the capacity, the tenacity. The strength to believe in others, in spite of all their failures, in spite of all the times they've disappointed, in spite of all the times they've made lead out of glass-brittle faith.

Shiro's thumb wipes the tear away, and his brows make this weird dance, like he doesn't know what to feel and the rush of emotions across his face is too fast for Keith to decipher—if he could, at all. The delicateness, the tender stroke over the skin under his eye, the fact that Keith's hand is still cradled by the other—he can only swallow, and hope that his heart hasn't exploded in his chest.

"Don't give up on yourself, Keith." Shiro continues, his hand moving from cheek to shoulder and, suddenly, he's leaning in and Keith could only stare – wide-eyed – as the line of Shiro's uniformed shoulder is pressed against his nose, his cheek against the skin above the collar and the hand on his shoulder now threaded through his hair.

Shiro's breath against his skin, the press of his own nose against Keith's neck—

His blood-stained hand, cradled like a prize in Shiro's other hand, pressed against his chest where Keith could feel the stiff texture against his skin and the beat of a too-big, too-kind, too-gentle heart—

Without his permission, Keith's eyes close, tight, as he digs his nose deeper against the collar and he pretends that the almost-silent sobs are not from his own lips.

* * *

His first flight simulation scores set tongues wagging. Shiro is still top dog, but Keith's managed to close in at second. The only difference is in three measly seconds.

The moment Keith exits the training room — the last one, as always, when everyone had gone — and steps into the empty hallway, he's suddenly swept into an embrace.

Shiro's eyes are glowing with pride, and Keith's heart is beating three times their normal speed.

The smile on his own face, though — it's so bright, so ecstatic, it might as well power the entire Garrison.

* * *

"You wanna take a ride?" Shiro asks, out of the blue, and all Keith does is tilt his head to the side. It was liberty, and the way the aviator glasses sit on Shiro's face do things to his stomach that he's half-sure aren't healthy. When he manages to pull his gaze away from Shiro's face, he notices the raised thumb pointing towards the speeder.

He wants to. Keith wants to, so bad.

Except—he's never asked. It wasn't his place. He knows a thing or two about keeping your own space, about things that you don't want other people to know – sometimes, not even your best friend with a too-handsome smile – and he respects Shiro enough not to encroach on where he's not wanted.

 _What if he's what you want?_ A traitorous voice croaks, beneath the lock and key of everything he pretends not to want. Keith bites the inside of his cheek as Shiro removes his sunglasses and leans forward, hands on his hips. "C'mon, you promised me a ride."

What else can he say to that but 'yes'? When the light hits Shiro's eyes in the right angle, they flash gold and Keith's lost the battle before he even knew he was in a war.

The child-like grin on Shiro's face offsets the way his stomach feels like it's in zero gravity, watching as he climbs over the speeder, the sleeves of his jacket furrowing as he reaches for the grips. Keith hesitates only for a moment before following suit, carefully settling himself behind the other.

This close – oh, God – being this close, Keith could smell cedar off Shiro's skin, distinct and singular. The expanse of Shiro's back – the width of his entire frame – pulls at Keith's blood, and the casual way Shiro says 'hold on to me, alright?' over his shoulder as he fastens his helmet on, like it's normal, it's common, as if they've done this so many times it's textbook—

 _Would you let me hold on to you forever?_

The engine under comes alive, an awakened beast. He could feel the hum in his legs, up his arms and an arc of excitement cuts through his thoughts. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around Shiro's middle, feels the cloth of his undershirt and the firmness of his stomach. Keith swallows, and if he was just a bit crazier, he'd think the cadence of Shiro's breathing jumped for a moment.

And they're off—

The rush—

The wind lashing out at him, them—

The pressure in his ears, the flapping of Shiro's jacket, the exhilaration pumping in his veins—

He doesn't know how to describe it, how the endless desert before them and the hum of the engine under him and just the repetitive, incessant freedom—

And it's just gravity and physics, isn't it? Motion and velocity and the rush towards something—

Sun up, sun down.

Shiro's smile.

Somehow – the metaphor – the idea, the _constant_ of it all eases the rigidity of his chest and he allows himself to relax, to drape himself over Shiro's back and let the speeder dictate the direction of his body—

The unmistakable tightening of his arms around Shiro's middle, the press of his fingertips against his sides—

 _We could be like this. Over and over._

It's almost sad how happy the thought makes him.

* * *

There's a house. Dilapidated, run-down. Abandoned.

The sight of it – in the middle of the dunes – open door, boarded windows, a hole in the roof – the irony isn't lost on Keith.

The speeder slows down, and he raises his head from its rest in between Shiro's shoulder blades. The curiosity is ignored for the moment, content to memorize the way Shiro's chest feels under his hands, the expanse of it as he breathes – outward and over and it takes everything he has in him not to curl his fingers into hooks and embed them into Shiro's skin. He takes into account the hitches and grooves, over the pectorals and down under, for the nights that were too long – a reminder for him to imagine and dream, and hope that—one day—he'll learn to think of Shiro and not feel the gaping maw in his chest.

When they stop, Keith reins in the disappointment and slowly extracts his arms from Shiro—and gets to removing the helmet, combing his fingers through his hair. Shiro does the same thing, and Keith holds back the smile threatening to burst out of him at the sight of that runaway hair flat against his forehead, Shiro's look of irritation, glaring at it as if offensive.

"Hey, it's not easy when your hair doesn't agree with you at all," Shiro mutters, a bit peeved — and the slight irritation, the _pout_ growing on his lips, just the picture of a somewhat disgruntled cat has Keith biting back from grinning wide. The other rolls his eyes, but the dimpled smile he throws Keith's way has him looking to the house and away from bright taupe eyes, before the red spreads across his face and not just his ears.

"What are we doing here?" He asks, eyeing the empty structure. There were some traces of recent occupation: an old pair of boots by the corner, near the low wall, a shovel. A welcome mat that had obviously seen better days by the door. Not the kind of things that would remain had this house been left all by its lonesome for any extended period of time.

"Exploring?" Shiro prodded, leaving their helmets hanging by the grips. He walked up to Keith and leaned a forearm on his shoulder, surveying the outside litter. Keith ignores the rapid-staccato beating in his chest.

He turns to him, raising a brow. "Seriously?"

Shiro gives him a look of betrayal and pouts again, ruffling his hair. "You wound me, Keith."

"You'll live," Keith smiles, crossing his arms. The arm on his shoulder lowers until Shiro's hand grips him instead, squeezing lightly and cocking his head towards the open door. Keith raises both hands, a dragged-out 'fine' following after.

It's not like he doesn't feel special, when Shiro chooses to spend his rare days off with him.

The inside of the house is exactly what Keith expected it to be - not entirely devoid of items, a few traces of habitation — there were plates and utensils in cabinets, old sofas without their covers, a few books here and there — and that was just the living room, it seems. There's a kitchen, he thinks, to the side, past an open arch and he can make out a table and the counter, and two other doors.

"Bathroom and bedroom, I reckon," Shiro hums, bending down to pick up a fallen photograph. Keith follows his gaze and he looks at the grainy picture - an old couple, and guessing from the clothes they were wearing, emphasis on the _old._ "Sweet."

Typical of Shiro to say something like that, as Keith turns away and heads to the closed doors. Shiro was right - one opened to a bathroom, mostly working, if you can stomach the somewhat moldy looking tiles. The other was a bedroom and, well, if it were a bit cleaner and if the lights were working and there were some decorations, it'd be a really nice room. The walls were painted a dark shade of brown - mahogany or maple or something - and the woodwork of the windowsill looked neat from where he was standing.

There's an old bed in the center of the room, set against the far wall, the mattress still on it. The covers had been removed, and so were the pillows, but it looked stable enough. Keith plopped himself down on the bed, felt the springs digging into his butt and frowned. Replace the mattress and fix everything else and it'd be a cozy bedroom.

It'd be a cozy house, to be honest. Not too big to make it feel cold and spartan, but enough for a small family...or a couple.

He hears Shiro rummaging in the living room, and his mouth dries.

It's not that—

It's not like he's ever gotten what he's wanted. It's not like every thought in his head that has his chest glowing warm, blood singing and his cheeks reddening, ever came true. So, what if he thinks about it—about _them?_ Aren't his thoughts his own? Wasn't he allowed to pretend to want something? Even if none of it came true, was it so wrong to allow himself a moment to wonder, _dream,_ and hope?

To—what exactly?

To wake up with Shiro's arm digging into his side? To roll over in the middle of the night and complain about Shiro hogging all the blankets? To fall asleep with Shiro's arm over his, long fingers locked in the spaces between his own?

To step through the door, finally comfortable in his own skin and find Shiro already waiting, leaning by the door jamb, smiling at him?

And he gets it. He totally gets that some things just don't fall into your lap the minute you want them, that some things take time - take time, dedication and blood - and he gets that, sometimes, not even all that is enough. Some things aren't just meant to be, and you can spend your entire life waiting and wanting and wilting and nothing changes. You're left with the shadow of everything you gave up—all for nothing.

There's this voice—barely there—but it prods at him, makes him think. _What if it doesn't have to be that way?_

What if wanting doesn't have to feel like falling without a parachute? What if it doesn't have to feel like running after a long gone train and two seconds past zero?

What if it's just as easy as reaching out and—maybe hold Shiro's hand? Wrap his arms around him, until he learns the sound of each beat of the other's heart?

There's a click - a flash and Keith blinks, looking towards the door.

Shiro is slowly lowering what seems to be a really old camera - one of those cameras that print out the image and let it form. Polaroids, he guesses.

He frowns. "What are you doing?"

The other shrugs. "Making memories? I mean, it was still working. Seemed like a waste to leave it out there."

The camera makes a noise and slowly prints out a thin piece of paper, watches as Shiro delicately pulls it out by the corner. He doesn't know what to do, clasps his hands together and looks up at the man beneath his fringe — he _hates_ having his picture taken. Hates seeing his own face on print. Hates having to go through Recruitment every six months to renew his ID at the Garrison. He hates sitting there, facing the camera — he feels transparent, grotesque. Every flaw on display.

He doesn't stand and reach out to grab the picture in Shiro's hands, to rip it into shreds and set them afire. Not when Shiro's smile grows small but gentle — and Keith's heart is up in his throat and past his lips and out in the desert, flayed and dead because that's the only reason for the lightheadedness and the heated thrum he feels after.

"You mind if I keep this?" The other asks, and—yeah, scratch that. His heart beats once more _then_ gets turned into vulture food. His shoulders do some motion thing that could pass off as a shrug, the tilt of his head as if nodding. Not necessarily yes or no, but the only thing Keith can come up best in the moment.

There's the sound of footsteps approaching, and the bed dips by his side and cedar wafts up his nostrils and he grips the edge of the mattress tight enough, telling himself not to turn his nose up and follow the scent like a dog. Shiro's elbow bumps with his, and he turns to the other just in time as Shiro holds the camera in a weird manner, with the glass facing them and…

Flash. He blinks again, raising a hand to rub at his eye as the camera prints the picture.

"Are you trying to blind me or something?" He grouches, ignores the chuckle from his side as an arm wraps itself around his shoulders. Shiro's always touching him - on one side or the other, and he's still not sure if it's something he wants or if it's just another way for him to torture himself.

"And miss seeing those eyes of yours? Not a chance in hell, buddy." The words are bullets against his skin, except the pain he expects to follow turn into frissons of scarlet and vermillion, wrapping around his heart, throat and eyes. The loss of air isn't a problem, the anticipation in his veins that come after the declaration is, instead, the root of it.

He doesn't say anything — until Shiro shows the photos to him. The first one is them, the one Shiro just took and it's...haphazard, to say the least. His own face is staring back at him, somewhat blank, unprepared for the shot. His hair is askew, not helped by Shiro's constant ruffling, and it's falling into his eyes. The light plays off them, and they're not as weird as he thinks they actually are.

Shiro's grinning wide - and it's funny how the photo fails to capture the entirety of the energy, the sunlit gleam and stardust that Shiro was - but it's the closest thing, to be honest. Half of his hair is out of frame, but the rebellious clump is still there, the taupe eyes crinkled at the corners, curved lips stretched out in that one beautiful smile.

God, he's so beautiful.

He flips to the next one - before he blurts something without thinking, like always - and he's looking at his own photo, the sole subject. He's staring, somewhere off to the side, and the light hits his face in a manner that casts shadows across his cheek. The color of his eyes stand out, the only saturation in a field of monochrome. It's something that he can almost consider artsy, but he doesn't really know what's in the picture important enough for Shiro to want to keep it.

He has an idea, an inkling — but it's too hopeful, too idealistic, too impossible—

And he doesn't allow himself to continue the thought.

They stay like that — quiet, contemplative — and Keith hands back the photos, both of them, except Shiro only takes the one of him and hands the other back, placing the photo in his hands and closing them, Shiro's skin warmer on his than anything else. "Please keep it?"

And—

Of course, he does. He wants to. Keith wanted to. He just didn't ask, didn't know if it was allowed, if he was allowed to hold on to it—

He doesn't hold on to a lot of things. No photographs on the walls of his bunk. No old Christmas cards or birthday wishes. The only thing he ever wants to hold on to is sitting beside him.

"Okay." _Thank you._

Shiro smiles - always that smile - and squeezes his shoulders with his arm. Keith looks at him, at the palettes of brown and grey in his eyes, mid-noon light cut into squares over his face. This close, he can almost count the number of Shiro's lashes — or the flecks of gold scattered across the field of taupe. He flicks his eyes downwards, to the slope of Shiro's nose and the curve of his lips - reddish, almost vermillion, almost scarlet, chapped - and he—

"Did you mean that?" He asks, instead. He looks away from the lips and back at Shiro, who is looking at him with this...heat in this dangerously intimate manner, enough to ignite him into burning himself out.

"What?" Low, hoarse. A rumble by the throat. Keith represses the urge to shudder.

"What you said...a while ago." He continues, unsure if he can get the words out. "About my...eyes?"

Shiro's eyes widen a bit - just a slight movement of his lids, an almost invisible tensing of his facial muscles, the slight parting of his lips in surprise and Keith feels the twitch of his thumb against the other, over the photo—

"Yes." Shiro answers, almost silently. "Yes."

Gravity doesn't reverse, and motion still continues on. He doesn't float, and the heart pumping blood across his body hasn't upended. It's funny, because he feels like all of that is actually happening.

Keith doesn't know how to respond. He ducks his head and does something stupid — something he'll probably regret once he gets his head back on and he's not feeling like someone's exchanged the oxygen in his chest with helium.

He leans his head against Shiro's shoulder—

—and Shiro holds him close, leaning back.

* * *

The photo isn't taped to the wall. It's resting inside the top drawer of his cabinet by his bunk, carefully placed amidst his paperback books and his wallet - everything he owns, all in that one drawer.

He doesn't think about how often he pulls the photo out just to look at it.

At sunrise and sunset.

* * *

The next time they head to the shack, there's already an unspoken agreement — like they've just decided, Keith realized, on their own and together without consultation. First, it was Shiro's jacket over the sofa's arm. Next, it was one of Keith's books by the bedroom window sill. The dingy mattress disappears, replaced by a thinner but definitely better one from the local market. The front door ends up with a new lock, a key finding its way mysteriously into the back pocket of Keith's jeans. The boarded windows remain as they are, but the curtains hanging over them is obviously a new fixture. The toilet actually starts flushing, now. Somehow, the thought has Keith chuckling to himself, Shiro following after until they're both giggling.

Keith accidentally bumps into the bedroom light switches one time, tripping over his own feet and it was really not because he was reading while walking. His shoulder flicks the switch up, and he blinks as the overhead lamp glows amber - followed by the rest of the room.

He sees the boxes, empty, in the kitchen garbage can and ends up flicking every switch in the house, each bulb lighting up. Shiro grins at him from his spot on the sofa, feet propped on a rickety table as he reads through one of Keith's novels — Anthem, Ayn Rand — and, after a moment, maybe too long a moment, of consternation, Keith follows him and sits next to him, propping his own book on his knee, feels the arm around his shoulder, the fingers pressing against his arm in appreciation.

The shack is quiet, and it's not like he and Shiro talk a lot - but it's cozy and it's peaceful and he feels comfortable...in his own skin.

* * *

Once, Keith falls asleep on the couch while waiting for Shiro to get back from an errand in town. When he wakes up, it's dusk, the outside sky painted in mauve, juxtaposed against the russet of the sand dunes. The door is closed, but he sees the speeder outside. A noise in the kitchen has him standing, the blanket over him falling back to the couch seat. It wasn't there this afternoon, Keith knows.

The living room lights are off, save for one lamp by the kitchen, and when he enters, Shiro turns to greet him, a beaten-up but serviceable refrigerator just lighting up beside him. "Hey."

"Hey." He answers back, raspy. He clears his throat, just as Shiro stands and closes the fridge door.

"Give it half an hour and it'll be fine." The other assures Keith, wiping his hands on his pants. The old plates inside the cabinets have long been cleaned and placed on their rack by the sink — this is what happens when you put two military men in a messy house, or one tidy military man and the other who could not refuse him — and there's an old song playing softly from the radio.

He feels sleep gunk in the corners of his eyes, the indent of his book still warm against his cheek. A box of pizza sits on the table, alongside Shiro and Keith's helmets.

"What's up?" Shiro asks when Keith finally stands before him, still blinking the sleep away.

He yawns, shaking his head, before leaning forward and pressing his face against the black cloth of Shiro's shirt, somewhere above the right side of the man's chest. There's a chuckle, belly-deep, and Shiro's arms around him, keeping him steady. "Still tired?"

Keith makes a noncommittal sound that has Shiro chuckling again, the reverb of his laugh both clear and muted out on the chest he's laying his head on.

One of Shiro's hands start drawing rubbing shapes across his back and he makes another sound, not in the right frame of wakefulness to realize how needy it is.

Shiro leans down, pressing his nose against Keith's cheek, his lips by his ear. "Let's go to bed?"

This isn't real. He knows it's not. Just a dream, a figment of his imagination, just one more wish branching out towards a possibility he'll never chase after—

And because it's not real, Keith agrees.

He looks up at Shiro and nods, raises his arms to wrap around over the other's shoulders. The hands on his back settle at his waist and he makes another sound, buying his face deeper against Shiro's skin because the hands are warm, big and he feels safe, they feel good on Keith.

"C'mon," Shiro hums, and slowly - like he was nothing - the arms pull him up, one moves from his waist to his butt, the other over his shoulders and the change of direction doesn't alter the way Keith clings to him. Had he been awake, had he been more in control of his mental faculties, being carried by Shiro would have given him an aneurysm on the spot—that is, if he survived the automatic self-combustion he'll experience at this _actually_ happening.

"Don't let go, alright?" Shiro murmurs, lips pressed against his ear and Keith knows that it's only in this dream, only here, is it possible for Shiro to trace the lobe of his ear with those lips.

The light alters from amber to grey and back to amber as Shiro moves through the rooms, the shadows shifting across his face and Keith doesn't stop himself from staring, from engraving the image into his brain. The press of the mattress against his back allows him to loosen his hold - just a bit - and he groans when Shiro starts to turn away from him—

The man laughs, wide, eyes shining. He leans close, his hands on Keith's cheeks—"Just a sec, alright? Just getting my boots off. You should, too, you know."

"Dun'care," is his response and Shiro chuckles again as Keith turns over and presses his face against the pillow. He feels hands on his legs and he peeks an eye out, Shiro winking at him as he unties Keith's shoelaces and pulls the boots off and sets them on the floor.

When both his feet are free, he slides them against the mattress, and—honestly, how long is it going to take for Shiro to get his ass in bed, anyway?

He might have blurted some of that out, Keith's not really sure but it'd be a good answer to the blown-out laugh Shiro gives, before the mattress dips and he feels a warm, too-warm body next to his.

Keith peeks at him, and although the lights are off, there's enough moonlight from outside to seep in through the crevices of the boarded windows and the curtains, enough for him to note Shiro lying on his back, face turned to him. Gold-lined taupe.

Suddenly, it dawns on him that this is _real._

That this wasn't a dream.

And maybe it shows on his face — the fragile hope, or maybe the tension in his shoulders, or the widening of his eyes, because Shiro is on his side, closer, and arm on his waist. "Hey, you alright?"

There's really no appropriate answer to that — really, it's hard to find any sort of good response to that when there's not only fear bubbling in his chest, but the tangible, the almost physical hope and the possibility that—

If he lets himself believe and hope.

If he lets himself go after this.

If he lets himself.

The arm around his waist tightens, and that's it—that's what breaks the chains and the allows the waters to come rushing through. He'll blame it on being half-asleep, and he'll blame it on a moment of irrationality. He whispers Shiro's name and presses forward, carving himself deep into the other's side and, God, it feels so good—

To have Shiro's arms around him and pull him flush and tight against his body.

To put his hand up on his chest, bunched into a fist over the man's heart and press his face against the cloth and know that, beneath, is the seam where arm meets chest, where cedar blooms against his skin.

To tangle his legs with Shiro's, the spike of not just arousal, but satisfaction — content, and the honey-warm rushing down his throat and into his chest that he'll never be crazy enough to define as something whimsical, something fortuitous as lov—

"'loser," he says, hums - he's not sure which verb, he's barely awake enough to function, let alone look up for words to describe the way his voice has become. Shiro doesn't disappoint, pulling him in - half on top of him and half beside him and it's just—

The warmth, the safety, the lock of Shiro's arms around him—

Cheesy power ballads, refrigerator light and dark, unruly hair across taupe eyes. A study of gold in repose. Keith doesn't want to admit that it's everything he's ever wanted. An end-game.

And that's what he wants—

The most.

End of the line.

And knowing Shiro's going to be there.

Shiro's lips are against the skin of his forehead, inches away from his hair and suddenly too-close to the cavities in his chest, and Keith couldn't find it in him to care, to keep away, to guard himself.

The scent of cedar is heady, and something intrinsically Shiro - something reminds him of rubber training mats and freshly-laundered bed sheets, oscillating from engine grease to morning mess hall coffee. It's addictive—tantalizing.

He tries not to read too much into the way Shiro breathes him in, the way his muscles quiver, and his arms tremble a bit. He'll overthink and overanalyze and jump to conclusions in the morning where he has the rest of the class drills to compartmentalize all the shitty things that come with feelings.

For now, he's content to just breathe, and wonders if this is what home feels like.

The north star is warm in his arms.

* * *

In the morning, when he finally opens his eyes—

His arms are still tucked between him and Shiro; sleep-laden limbs are still settled on his waist, legs tangled.

Ochre and taupe greet his gaze the moment he looks up, and Shiro is still beautiful the moment he wakes up.

Keith stares a little too long at Shiro's lips, and maybe Shiro does too, as he leans close in—

And feels the edge of his nose against Keith's own, forehead to forehead.

 _This could be forever._ He thinks. _We could be forever._

* * *

It starts with a light touch. Nothing too heavy, just a mere bump of their shoulders. A hand on his cheek. A thumb on his chin. Keith hopes he doesn't have to look up — not because he doesn't want to, but it'd mean looking into Shiro's eyes and knowing that every rational cell in his brain flies off the edge at that — but his hopes are dashed as Shiro angles his head upwards.

There's a small smile on his face, the russet in the taupe strained, worry tracing their edges. Keith bites his lip before giving him a smile, even if only half of it is real. He doesn't want Shiro to worry — not today, on this special day.

"Sorry," he says. "I just...I'm gonna miss you."

The admission isn't as difficult as he had imagined. There're no glasshards and sand in his throat.

Shiro's eyes grow despondent for a moment, the arm around Keith's waist tight, the thumb on his chin pressing meaningfully against his skin. "If you want...I could—"

The thought cleaves through Keith, and he holds Shiro's face in both hands. "No. This is your moment, Shiro. You don't get a chance like this too often, you know that."

Shiro nods, the military beret covering his hair moving with him. He's dressed to the nines, in full military regalia, a requirement for the Kerberos press conference. He looks so goddamn good—sharp, professional, purposeful. Everything Keith's ever wanted, everything he's ever wanted to be—

Except, now he realized, it's to be _with._

Because Shiro is more than the fancy hats and the form-fitting, medal-adorned coats. He's more than flight simulation scores, recruitment posters and inspirational speeches.

Shiro scratches his jaw when he tries to lie. Shiro sings cheesy love songs in the bathroom. Shiro doesn't hog the blankets at night but stubbornly wraps himself around you, arms and legs and all. Shiro doesn't snore, but he does mutter nonsense in sleep. Shiro separates laundry items by color _and_ texture. Shiro writes his A's in cursive form than in block. Shiro rests his weight on his right leg when he's waiting, and rests it on his left when he's irritated. Shiro burps twenty minutes after he's eaten. Shiro doesn't like pineapple on his pizza and puts them all on Keith's slice.

Shiro is taupe and mauve and ochre. A study of gold in repose.

"And, you'll be back." Keith says, and hopes that the almost-crack of his voice on the last syllable was too faint for Shiro to notice. "Just a year. Twelve months and you'll be back. A hero."

Long ago, that would have made him envious, would have left his mouth tasting bitter.

"It's almost too long," A pained expression runs across Shiro's face. Keith takes a deep breath and presses their foreheads together. This close, he can see the conflict in Shiro's eyes. "Too long to be away from you."

Shiro is unfailingly honest, unrepentantly generous with his kindness and too brightly-lit to remain on the ground like a fallen star. He's a comet ready to streak across the expanse, cut through the night sky.

"You have the photo, right?" Keith jokes, grinning. He still doesn't see what Shiro sees in that one picture - they've taken a lot, since that day. In moments of light, and in the evenings spent in each other's arms. There's an album, somewhere in the shack, that's filled to the brim with polaroids.

Shiro smiles back, just a bit - genuine. He doesn't know what to do with himself, with his body, the urge to contort himself towards Shiro, to envelop and be enveloped and even that, Keith will admit, doesn't make sense.

"Not the same thing." Shiro answers. "Twelve months being away from you, not being able to hold you and be near you."

His heart is somewhere beyond the stratosphere, and Keith tries not to—

Fuck. He's about to cry.

"It's not forever." It's all he can say, without feeling like he's about to come apart at the seams. Shiro doesn't look to be faring any better, his head angled, his nose against Keith's cheek, their breaths mingling. A tilt — an inch beyond his own capabilities — just one step, one more push of strength, of courage he's not actually feeling—

"It's not forever." Shiro repeats after him, trying to convince himself and, damn it. The hope running beneath the worry, the sorrow — the squeezing of his chest is enough for him to want to say the words, to whisper them, curve his lips around them, line the planes of Shiro's skin with them—

 _Thank you for choosing me._ He thinks, just at the edge of his tongue. _Thank you for saving me._

It's not enough, too shallow to cover the extent of what presses on his chest from the inside out. When light breaks into myriads of colors in the reflection of sunlight over ochre, barely anything is honest enough.

 _I love you._ That's all it takes. A mere breath in, the hitch up his voice and ten lifetimes' worth of courage. _Come home soon._

Shiro looks at him like he's so important, the way his thumb runs over the skin of his chin resembles the loving caress of a painter on a canvas—

"Wait for me?" Shiro asks, hope teetering at the edge, broken into a great many shards, each painted in ochre.

Keith takes one breath, and another, and another.

And it's not like Shiro doesn't know, like Shiro hasn't seen with a startling intimacy on who and what Keith is. It's not like Shiro doesn't know better—truer—than most people. It's not like Shiro wasn't there at the beginning, it's not like he hasn't seen Keith surrounded by the ghosts of what he's lost and what he'll never have. It's not like Shiro hasn't seen the bowed head of the lonely too old boy in a run-down orphanage who never realized he's been so desperate for someone to be there for him. It's not like Shiro hasn't seen the scrapes and the blood across his skin and knuckles over a sneer, a jeering comment meant to cut him deep. It's not like Shiro hasn't seen him at his worst—not just the astronomy books, the paper-planets hanging off the ceilings, and the little moments that helps him forget, sometimes, what he really lost.

And it's not like Shiro doesn't know what Keith looks like, when the anger and the sarcasm falls away — when the hastily-bandaged wounds are bare for the crowd to see, when the regret and the self-disgust is ready to implode from the inside, looking up at an impassive sky and wondering if disappearing was kinder.

What Keith is, and what he really isn't.

He swallows, and he nods.

Shiro looks at him for a long, long moment more, long enough for Keith to know that he saw it; that he gets it—he understands that it's all part of this same fucking game Keith's been playing his whole stupid life, where the shallow end is the only place he ever starts to drown.

And he knows — when the time comes, Shiro will fish him out of the ocean.

Keith is suddenly crushed against Shiro, arms too tight, breath too short. His hands are clawing at Shiro's back, just as intense as the way Shiro breathes out and Keith knows that he's not just missing a limb, or a person. Just his entire universe.

"I'll be home soon," Shiro whispers, traces the words with his lips against Keith's ear. Home. Not the Garrison and its cold bunks and the million, greyed-out apathetic faces. Home. Polaris in his arms. The shack in the middle of the desert. Ochre dipped in taupe. "I promise."

 _I'll be waiting,_ Keith swears. He's spent his entire life waiting, and he'll wait for his life to come back. No matter how long it takes.

* * *

 **AN:** More Sheith nonsense from me. It's a two-chapter work. Chapter 1 is pre-kerberos and Chapter 2 is post-canon season 6!


	2. Chapter 2

**and if you love me with all of your heart**

* * *

There was this feeling. Insidious. Silent. Deathly cold. It had haunted him the moment the Kerberos mission was deemed a failure due to pilot error. It gnawed at his insides, straggled up his veins and placed its vice-grip tight hands around his heart and _squeezed_ until it drew blood. He had learned to live with it: live with the pain, live with the near-endless grasp in his chest — like inky darkness just oozing out of his pores and his skin — and know that each breath he took ended up drawing more and more of the ugliness out. It's staggering - painful - impossible to breathe through, on the nights where the sky resembled none of the nighttime blanket of stars but only an infinite road on the way to nowhere, on the nights where the shadows in the crevices and corners of _their_ little shack were pits he could fall into forever.

It's a feeling he's both familiar and unfamiliar with, a feeling that he knew better than most — in every tear-stricken sob he's had to hold, under the bedsheets and in the deathly silence of a near-empty orphanage, where old pages of gravitational forces couldn't console the aching emptiness, the hacked-off phantom presence of what's no longer there — in every subtle shake of the head and the crushing disappointment, the constant echoing _not enough not enough not enough not enough_ barrelling through the spaces between _I don't care I don't care I don't care_ — in every moment he's asked, every question he's raised and thrown and only to receive nothing but a short and cold response: pilot error.

It was loss.

It felt like loss. It _feels_ like loss. It feels like the widening of a bullet-hole wound in his heart that's grown to half his entire chest. It feels like earth slipping from under him, free-falling, no end in sight in. It's loss and it isn't. It's the needle-sharp precision of an acute absence and the blunt echo that thrummed across every skin of his body. He's not sure. Keith's not sure of anything anymore.

When that hurtling rush of light - arcing through the sky - had come, and Keith had placed hope on all hope, and found Shiro's damaged, scarred - but alive, goddamn _alive_ \- body in the midst of it all, it had felt like every open wound, every festering hole, every gnat-infested fissure had sewn over, closed, shut, _healed._ Loss was painful - tasted like ash and fire in his mouth, and deep-seated ice in his chest. Finding Shiro amidst the rubble and the regrets, the too-long months and too-lonely days, seeing life in his skin, and recognition in his eyes — like an awakening, a sunrise, his heart learning to beat, and his body learning to breathe once more.

"Keith…?" Shiro's voice had been low - hoarse, broken and pained but it was alive.

Alive.

Five letters. One word. The entirety of Keith's gravity hinging on the peripheries.

"I'm here," he had responded, arm around the warm, breathing, _living_ body and Shiro's pained grunts in his ear as Keith hoists him off the gurney. Every second that passed was a promise from him — never again, never losing him again. "I got you, alright? I got you."

Keith tried to hold on — Shiro was a comet, a blazing white meteor streaking across the expanse of the universe, falling with the full force of a dying star. His hands never knew anything about holding on — the best they could do was curl inward, fingers pressed against palms in a worthless attempt to forget the ghosts of those no longer, the shadows he couldn't catch.

— and he had learned to bite his own lip, learned to press the nail against his skin hard enough to bleed and learned to silence the ache in him that could fell another man to his knees, as Voltron and Earth and nightmares out of a science fiction novel take center stage. His own distress - his own _loss_ \- those were things that he could deal with, in time, in his own quietness, head bowed and blood pressed against his tongue. Zarkon and the Galra and the ever-shifting horizon, beset by twinkling stars and purple laser beams, continued to spiral like a creeping vine slowly itching its way into their chests to crush them from the inside out.

All the memories he held onto — the almost-silent nights spent in warm arms, tucked into cedar, the press of soft lips against his forehead and slit-taupe cutting through the dark of Shiro's hair; the almost-stolen moments printed on square polaroid cuts, pasted and hidden in the sheets of a bulky album, under a mattress in a lonely house in a desert far too big for a lonely soul — the memories that had kept him going, that had kept him standing on his knees and breathing past the glass and sand and ice in his throat, the memories he had learned to hide and lock inside a chest that he doesn't visit, where the ticking hour hand of the wall clock hits four in the morning and the recurring thought of _two more hours and it'll be sunrise, no more nightmares, no more dreams, no more missing his smile with an ache so hard that it echoed in my bones_ until his eyes slid shut in exhaustion.

There was no time for long gone chances and regrets, no time for daydreams on what-could-have-been's. There was a war, an unaware planet in the middle of it and their own lives at the front to worry about. His own yearnings, the long days and months he's spent, breathing and sustaining himself on the possibility, on the probability of _hope_ —

" _I'll be home soon,"_ Shiro had whispered, with the conviction of an asteroid gaining speed. Home. Not the Garrison and its cold bunks and the million, greyed-out apathetic faces. Home. It had taken forever to find it, to find what that four letter word meant as he ignored another set of parents leaving the rainbow river. Polaris just beyond his reach. The shack in the middle of the desert. Ochre dipped in taupe. _"I promise."_

It had been the only thing that kept him moving, going – kept the ugly head of regret from clogging his veins, kept the ice from reaching his heart and turning it to stone as each step had taken him forward and onwards, sifting sand and kaleidoscope auroras and the north star heralding him home.

Funny – the words were more hurtful, mocking and sharp, when Shiro's just a few steps away, his outline tinged in gold as he talks to Allura. Funny, the steps feel like half the universe.

There had been no time for all the regrets, the missed chances – not when Zarkon was relentless in his pursuit of Voltron, and there's irony in the realization, Keith thinks. Irony in the obsessive, panic-driven chase Zarkon made – and maybe it's because he was a former Paladin, a former pilot of a Lion and maybe it felt like a part of him would always be missing, reaching out for what's not there, except for the ghost and the specter and the memory of what he's lost. Keith doesn't admit that he understood the feeling – understood it with a vengeance, a finality that bordered on resignation.

When the crest of the Blade of Marmora catches light, and the heaviness of the sigil seeps into his bones, Keith can only bite his tongue in the knowledge that he's holding on to a thread-thin line—

Allura's rage and distrust – the creeping distance between them, the Paladins, his _friends_ – the darkness creeping into Shiro's eyes, in the aftermath of every nightmare –

Shiro – who had returned to him, in scar-kissed skin and grey-brown hair and broken and haunted. Shiro – taupe turned steel, smile edged with a lingering exhaustion, the fleeting, ephemeral tail at the end of a comet. Keith swallowed his pride, his disappointment and his hopes – smiling back at Shiro. _It's okay. It's not your fault. You came home._

 _There's that, at least,_ is left unspoken and hushed, thrown under the blankets of survival and rebellion. If it was what Shiro needed – to be able to move on, to relearn how it was to be human and not a prisoner aboard a battlecruiser with his life on a rope; if it meant Keith shutting down every crevice and cavern, he'd do it. To see Shiro again, see him safe, alive _. This is enough._

It really was – enough. Enough for him to keep the skin from blistering, keep his heart from breaking, through the battle with Zarkon and the Robeast, Haggar's magic and Lotor, the origins of Voltron and the ugly, debilitating truth of what things are, what they all were, what _he actually was_ – through every hurdle and stone and rubble and mountain his life had thrown at him. The Blade of Marmora and his _mother_ —

"Hello Keith," The Shiro in front of him says – imperious, cold, unkind. It's the final chip in wall that's long past breaking.

"It's going to be okay. You know that, right?" Keith asked – pleaded – unwilling to raise a hand to Shiro. Everything that had kept pushing him up to this point, every decision he's had to make, every blood spilled on his behalf – _everything_ – he had been willing to shoulder, to bow his head and accept as his responsibility. The Blades, Galra, Voltron – he had been willing to bleed for them, for all of it. Once, a man had so much faith in him – that he could be better, better than anything Keith could ever come up for himself.

It was a flurry of vermillion and cerise, blade against blade. Fallen steel beams and shattered glass pods, an endless number of clones – in the same muscle, same skin, the same beatific look of repose Shiro had when he was asleep – all bubbling up his throat as he parried each slash of Shiro's sword – the manic animosity, tinged in crimson. Rampage.

Keith ducks, feels the heat of the cerise blade cut through strands of his hair as he falls on all fours, pushes himself back and rolls away, just as Shiro runs his fist through the ground. Steel breaks, and what's left is a gaping crater, hate flashing through Shiro's eyes – an emotion Keith's never seen on the other's face, least of all directed to him.

"Shiro, _please,"_ that's all he could do, all he could say. What else can you say, when the person who was half of you, the entirety that made you as you are was on the opposite end of the spectrum, nothing but rage and hate and disgust smeared across his eyes and his lips like a stain you can't erase? Haggar's magic may have caused this, but it didn't lessen the blow, didn't make the pain feel any less crippling.

Hopefully, there's still Shiro under all that.

Hopefully, there's still a beating heart under all that rage.

Hopefully, there's still the Shiro that loves him beneath the fabrics of magic and madness.

"I should have abandoned you like your parents did," Shiro seethes, teeth bared, corded muscles bunched in his furor. Each word, each synonym – pronounced clearly and loudly – and Keith doesn't realize he's taken a step back, his free hand bunching up the cloth of his cuirass over his chest as if to rid himself of the ache, the pain. The moment of weakness – the slip of vulnerability – has the vermillion-red of Shiro's eyes flashing and the grin that follows is unforgiving.

"They saw you for what you are." Shiro continues, cruelty fashioning his words into needle-sharp spears that slid past his defenses. "Broken. _Worthless._ "

 _No, you don't mean that. You don't._ Keith bites his lip, raises his sword and angles his body, tries to remember everything Shiro taught him about his balance, trying to forget the hateful, ugly truth spewing from his lips.

"I should have seen it myself."

 _If you believe that, if you really believe that, then…_

Then, those promises. Those nights spent in the silence of the shack, in a space they could almost call their own. If everything Shiro said was true, then, what was the point? Why keep fighting him? Why keep fighting at all?

Wouldn't it be better to just give up, surrender—allow himself to be flung into the waves and drown and disappear, if it meant hurting less, if it meant that he didn't have to feel like every goddamn step took more and more from him until he's half-full of regrets, half-empty of a finishing line?

And the thing is—Quintessence—whatever it is, as a whole, it was the crux of everything. It was energy and truth. The ideal under all the covers and masks, the undeniable genesis in the core. And if something like that had crept under Shiro's guard to infect his mind, putting him under Haggar's control—

Even if it meant that everything Shiro said was true—

Even if it meant that everything Shiro said was something he believed—

Keith couldn't. He couldn't allow it. It'd be too much, too much to sacrifice.

It would be too _easy_ to give up, to surrender, to let death have his way with him.

He grips the sword tight – tight enough to hurt, to distract him from the realization that he's gone past the point of no return. After this, there will be nothing left.

No more finish lines and end-games. No more bumbling hopes and childish dreams. He's long sold his chances to a future the moment he raised his sword against the man who taught him how to wield one.

 _This is how you lose him,_ the voice in his ear whispers. Goads. Seethes. It sounds like his father – like his mother. Most of all, it sounds like Shiro. _This is how you lose him all over again._

* * *

"Just give in, Keith. The team's already gone. I made sure of it _myself._ " The man above him gloats, pressing his blade down against his. There's nothing of the Shiro he knew – the man he loved – in those eyes and, God, the similarity still hurt like a freight train, like an entire avalanche of rubble pounding him into the dirt.

Keith's entire body _hurts_ , every muscle and joint aching for peace, limbs weary from holding a blade, weary from fighting. It's the only thing he knows to do now. Fighting. Fighting and hurting and killing.

He doesn't want to fight anymore. No more shedding of blood, no more violence. All he ever wanted was to belong, to feel like he had a place in the world - that somehow, somewhere, there was someone who would see him and not shake their head in disappointment, who would see past every wall he's built to keep others from hurting him even deeper and realize that the solitude he's lived in for so long was never something he wanted—

FIghting has made him lose so much. His innocence, his dignity. His family. And he'll lose Shiro.

He can't. He can't lose Shiro. Not like this. Never like this.

He doesn't want to fight anymore, doesn't want to raise a blade to his brother and friend and the love of his life, all of those titles and more, amalgamated into the taupe-eyed morning star that had saved him from the start.

Shiro bears the blade lower, growling and the cerise-bright heat _sears_ Keith's cheek. Marked, the burning, white-hot pain lancing through him, blinding him, electrifying the nerves around the mark.

He doesn't realize he's screaming, buckling, desperately digging a way out with his body through the steel ground, away from everything that hurt, from everything that kept hurting him over and and over and—

Shiro.

Shiro wouldn't want this.

Shiro isn't like this.

Shiro would rather die than do this.

" _No,"_ Keith roars, allowing the rage in his blood – the blood of his people – to fuel his limbs, pooling the energy into weary bones and slides through the space between their bodies, arcing around, bearing down with the force of his rage.

Light sizzles, the cerise blade against his face dissipates and Shiro is on his knees and a gaping, hacked-off absence of a mechanical right limb. The look of shock – _fear_ – in taupe eyes slowly losing their vermillion glow cuts through the air, and Keith finds the strength to force his legs to stand.

 _Was it worth it—the price you had to pay—for this?_ The voice asks. Keith can't look away, can't look away from every emotion in Shiro's eyes: rage and terror, betrayal and _loss._

 _It wasn't. It wasn't worth the price._ The indents of the blade's grip are as familiar to Keith as the pattern of Shiro's breathing in sleep. He raises the blade high, overhead, an executioner awaiting the sentence. Shiro's lips move – part to speak, whisper out a name. His own name. _Nothing is worth this._

"But I have to," the words escape his lips out of their own volition. Keith's insides are frozen, twisted in ice. Shiro was willing to make the sacrifice play, was willing to bet his entire life on saving people - both those he knew and those who couldn't give two shits about him. Shiro strived to be better than the rest, than the monotonous, sheep-minded cattle of an ignorant world. Shiro was willing to burn himself out - a flickering phoenix - all too ready to crash if it meant paving the way for a better future. Can Keith do any less? Can Keith find the strength to do that—to put the needs of the others, the many, above his? Can he find the strength to throw away everything he had if it meant protecting the world, protecting those left? The answer burns bright, in the crest of the sword overhead, the grip biting into his skin.

This is what it means to gamble and _lose._ This is what it means to lose everything. "I couldn't protect you."

The admission is quiet, almost silent amidst the humming of energy in the platform's once-dormant machinery. Shiro stares at him in horror – and Keith, he gets it. To have someone finally see him for what he was – _is._ All too willing to pay any price. "But I could protect everyone else if I do this."

"Keith." His name is spoken in broken inflections, tinted in half-regret, half-something. Something important. Something Shiro wants him to know.

"I love you." Keith admits. He finally admits. He says it as clearly as he can, as heartfelt as he can. He says the words as every bone that kept him standing crumbled and turned to dust, at every memory of every sacrifice he's had to make rears its ugly head to bristle and smolder at him – until all that's remaining is a withered husk of all the hopes he's given up on.

At the very least, Shiro deserves to know. At the very least, what Keith feels deserves to be known. The idea – the dream – the small flame of possibility, an almost-idyllic prayer of what could have been – a future with Shiro – all of it, it burned like a sigil deeply embedded into his skin, its fire cutting deeper than the scar on his face ever could. The utter _unfairness_ of it crashes into him in unceasing waves and all he could do was swallow his sobs, swallow them as deep as he can until he's choking in his own blood.

He hopes – on that small flame – that the words carry everything he doesn't have the strength or the time to say, all the times that he had been ready to give up, starting from the first, the moment he spied crimson beyond sheer curtains, the moment taupe eyes gleamed gold in laughter, mauve sunsets and ochre sunrises.

And the others—

They're going to know.

Aren't they?

They're going to smell it on him—Shiro's blood. The stench of death; the slow decay—his own, on the inside. The putrefaction.

But maybe—

Maybe there's a chance—a snowball's chance in hell.

Maybe Shiro will want to forgive him.

It's not something that can be forgiven; it's not something that's possible to assuage or absolve or unmake. But the intention counts. The intention matters. If Shiro hasn't forsaken him no matter how much he deserves to be locked up and lost, no matter how many times Keith's failed him, failed them, dashed every hope into a disappointment—

And maybe—

Maybe Shiro will understand.

Maybe Shiro will understand the stomach-churning desperation, the panicked fucking urgency of trying to reconcile the honest truth that it was never what he wanted with the fact that he did it anyway; with the fact of the rust-red stain ground into every line of his hands; with the impression of it on him everywhere like a spiderweb of severed veins—

Shiro's eyes widen – taupe on taupe, vermillion gone – as the words sink in. Keith tastes blood, and brings the sword down.

The platform explodes.

* * *

Infinite white.

Shiro's unconscious body, hand held in Keith's, as pure white reaches out for them. The blade he holds on to in his other hand – the blade struck into the platform and keeping them afloat – slowly starts to cut through the metal, unable to take Keith and Shiro's weight.

This is how it ends. Keith understands, as he takes one final moment – tracing the slope of Shiro's nose, the lashes set against tan skin, the muscles lax. No sneer or grimace, no murderous rage painting his face into an ugly visage of everything he'll never be able to have.

 _Maybe this is forever._ Keith thinks, as the blade finally cuts through everything and they free fall into nothing but light. The seconds swim by with the force of _hours._

* * *

Keith finds Shiro's spirit in the frozen, timeless plane, where he's been waiting for so long.

"I'm sorry," the apologies are rushed, blubbered, as he tries to look past the blurriness, tries to map the hazy outline of Shiro's eyes. "I'm sorry."

Forgiveness tastes like soot in his mouth, and he feels it crumbling into dust in his hands.

* * *

"You found me." Shiro – the _real_ Shiro – says, eyes half-closed in exhaustion, running up Keith's jaw and into his eyes. The golden flecks gleamed in the nearest star's light.

"You should rest." He says, answers, tries to hold back everything else he wants to say – allows himself to be weak enough, weak enough to raise his gloved hand and push the silver hair away from Shiro's eyes. The scar across his nose has long healed, and Keith resists the desire, the want, to run his fingers over it. He doesn't. He can't. Not anymore. "I'll be here when you wake up."

He doesn't notice the rest of the team – not the way Lance sniffles, or the way Allura wipes her hands across her face and breathing wetly. He only sees the way Shiro looks at him, his eyes alight with an emotion he can't name – the way it takes forever for Shiro to nod, to close his eyes and lean his forehead against Keith's chest.

The ache, the need – God – the want to just tuck Shiro against him, hold him tight, lock Keith's arms around the too-big body and just never let go – it's almost overpowering, _overwhelming._

But – when he feels Shiro's breathing ease into a fitful sleep – he looks up to Allura and Lance, and finds their gazes on him already.

"I—"Nothing comes out for a moment, his lips moving, groping for words, but no sound escapes save for the shift of leather of the cuirass. "I need—"

It's not a matter of I, anymore. Shiro needs rest. He needs medical help, needs to be checked for anything not normal. He needs to be in a secure location, needs to be watched. Keith has no idea how Haggar's magic works – or how Allura even manipulates Quintessence but he can't—

He can't be the one. He's too compromised, too emotionally involved. Not when the realization that he was _this_ close to killing Shiro—

 _This_ close to destroying everything he stood for—

No, he can't be the one.

"I need you take him somewhere safe," He says – no, orders – his voice brooked no argument. A glare is all he needs for Lance to compose himself and nod, opening his arms and taking hold of Shiro's unconscious body. Allura's gaze flashes with concern for him, before nodding and turning to the rest of the team. "Put him in the Black Lion. Shiro's energy is strongest there – perhaps it will keep him stable for the moment."

Seeing Shiro in Lance's arms, watching as the other walks away with Hunk's help – it took everything in Keith to not run after, to not wring Shiro from the other's arms and keep him close—

Allura is beside him, closer, when Lance and Hunk and Shiro are too far away, already heading up the Black Lion, and his legs are standing on their last nerves, and she places a hand on his shoulder – not unlike the way Shiro would – and that's what breaks him—

"I almost killed him." He says, whispers – stutters. "I almost killed him."

It leaves him gasping, breathing through ichor and seeing through molten fire. The epiphany – the groundbreaking truth – of what he had been willing to pay, of the choice that he had been willing to make. How the pain had sharpened to a point where he couldn't feel anything as he made the choice, asked for no explanation from Shiro - to be judge, jury and executioner in a breath of a second. Allura's arms are suddenly around him as his knees lose whatever strength they have, the ground hurtling up to meet him—

"Easy, easy, boy," Coran's words are soft, faint – a whisper over the din of the thunder in his ears. "Just breathe. There we go, good."

Keith nods, feels the Altean's hand on his shoulder move to his back. Allura is still beside him, her own silver hair flanking her, and all it took was the liquid gleam of her blue-violet eyes for him to rest his knees on the ground and lay his head against her shoulder, uncaring of the way the warmth tracked down his temple in a clear line, the way the sorrow and the regret trailed down his hands in bright-red splotches, except there's no blood, nothing to show for his mistakes.

He feels shame welling up, like a torrent in reverse, whirling like a maelstrom and sweeping everything warm – everything that drove the cold away – until he feels ice all over. His eyes shut on their own, as he raises a fist to his lips to ease – _to stop_ – the trembling of his chin and the repetitions of _I'm sorry_ itching to burst from his lips.

Allura's hands are on his face, his hair and he hears her say his name over and over – sorrow lacing them, softly-spoken – and Coran's still with them, with his hand still on Keith's back and he doesn't know what to do with the hand not against his mouth except run to it up his chest and claw at the tightness, the suffocating weight on it, trying to breathe—

A sniff against his cheek, an almost quiet whine and his wolf – Yorak – is suddenly pressing into his space, soft muzzle and sharp ears and the alien – otherworldly – scent that Keith couldn't place but felt intrinsically familiar, and Yorak is huge, almost as tall as Keith should the wolf stand on his hind legs, and this way – with Keith's arms roping around him, he feels warm, feels the ice in his veins and on his skins thawing out. Yes, he's in control. He can do this. He can breathe. Just in and out. Inhale. Exhale. Just breathe—

Warm. It envelopes him, like a blanket of gentle fire. _Concern._ Keith opens his eyes and Yorak's bright-yellow _starlike_ eyes look back at him under the strangely colored fur.

 _I'm happy you're here._ Keith thinks. There's a response, a pulsating of something brighter – happiness, joy – in his mind. Yorak tilts his head to the side and presses his muzzle against Keith's nose. Shiro would have loved him, Keith realizes. Shiro was too gentle, too soft – could not resist the sunlight eyes of a cosmic wolf or the sullen purple glare of a too lonely boy. _Shiro._

The warmth twists until it's paler, dimmer. Sadness. Yorak whines, his mental awareness of Keith's moods troubling him. It had been a while since the wolf had to feel the more volatile side of Keith's temperament, had grown used to the easiness of the two-year time loop they've been travelling in.

And—

Yorak's not used to it, to everything Keith feels for Shiro – for the impact of so many emotions, as deep-seated as his own bones, all tumbling out in the open and overwhelming and suffocating. He didn't miss the way Yorak pressed into him before collapsing against him, whining against his chest. Just one more mistake to add to the never-ending list of mistakes he's made.

Keith closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the fur. _I'm sorry._

It's the only thing he's said so far, and it's the only thing that has been appropriate. It's the only thing he can do to pay back everything else he's done.

* * *

Only the infectious ripple of Yorak's excitement and recognition that thrummed in Keith's mind alerted him to the person approaching the group.

All it took was opening his eyes, looking up and seeing the same pain in his mother's eyes – and Keith finally realizing what emotion had been there all this time, what emotion had been lurking in the shadows of purple in every glance she thinks Keith doesn't notice, in every aftermath of the times he's told her about Shiro, about Voltron and the team and everything that had kept him standing and it dawns on him, like an asteroid cutting through the atmosphere and crashing to the ground in a tumultuous storm, that – for the longest time – what he had thought was distance was nothing but loss.

And—

Keith knows that Krolia _knows_ how it feels like—

To make the choices no one else would—

To sacrifice everything the way no one else was willing to—

To bloody their hands with the lives they've damaged and destroyed if it meant something greater, protecting something greater, some _one_ greater—

He doesn't remembering standing, doesn't remember walking past Allura and Coran, ignoring Romelle's wide-eyed stare, Yorak trailing at his heels, until he's in his mother's space, standing before her and—

What can he say? What can he do? What else can he do but raise his shoulders in a confused shrug, his arms open and placating for a reason – any reason – to justify the constant gnawing in the space between his lungs, the lead in his muscles and the obsessive drive to claw his own skin through and pull his heart out and crush it until it stops _hurting—_

What else can he say except the repetitive, stuttering, weak, _worthless_ mantra – "I had—I had to—I had" – and not knowing if it's enough, if it will ever be enough for anyone else, if it will ever be enough to justify what he's had to do, if it will ever be enough for him to forgive himself.

 _Weak. Broken. Worthless._

His mother reaches a hand out, and her touch is gentle, fragile and heartbreakingly _soft_ against his cheek and—

"I know." Krolia says, and somehow the words are enough. Somehow, the two simple words of understanding are enough. They're short, small, _and insignificant_ but they're enough.

And maybe it's because Krolia's his mother – or maybe it's because she knows, intimately, on what it means and what it feels to do what you have to do – or maybe it's both but suddenly they're enough.

And her arms are around him, and his nose is pressed against her chest and he finally allows himself to cry.

* * *

A flurry of decisions are made – interstellar courses, transit routes, possible planets for sanctuary on their way to Earth, Galra fleet movements, evading great attractors – and Keith spends it by the metal door near the Black Lion's cockpit, half-hidden in shadow, watching Shiro sleep. It had been fortuitous – the random pressing of a few buttons in a mission almost a lifetime ago – that turned the pilot seat into a makeshift table. It wasn't as comfortable as a mattress, but with the Castle gone, it was the best they had.

Shiro spends most of his time asleep, capable of only waking in short bouts, just enough for taupe eyes to peek through the slits, enough for the slight movement of his lips or the deeper breaths he's taking.

Just enough for Keith to duck his head and step deeper into the shadows. Just enough for him to erase whatever emotion is on his face and turn away, only to bump into another of the team – Allura's concerned gaze, Lance's wide-eyed worry or Hunk and Pidge's all-too-knowing looks – and it takes every skill of diversion and redirection for him to ward off their questions, circle about and disappear. He knows what he's doing isn't helping anyone – all this avoidance and secrecy hadn't helped anyone at the start, and it'll do no wonders this time around. Except, it's not the secrecy Keith avoids –

It's the questions. The doubt. The pervasive, repetitive desire to know what happens next – what happens to him and Shiro in the aftermath – what the fallout's going to be like, how far the damage has spread and just how irreparable everything would be.

— and crawling after the fire, Shiro is going to need to heal, to be around people who can help him heal and settle. Shiro's had to make his way from here to now, carrying the memory of the people he's sacrificed to get back home and Keith knows that feeling all too well.

Shiro doesn't need another corpse clinging to him. He doesn't need another obliterated soul wrapping bloody shreds and tendrils around his ankles while he tries to move the fuck on from his own damn punishment; he doesn't need—

Keith.

Is the thing.

He doesn't need Keith.

He doesn't need distractions. He doesn't need somebody else's selfish fucking pain. He's got his own hurdles to jump and his own damn mountain to climb; the last thing he needs is a half-alien weight hanging off of him while he tries to take them.

Keith's never been good with feelings, self-pity least of all, never been good with handling them – be it one way or the other. He's pulled the trigger wire in too many situations, had thought too much instead of acting, had acted too much instead of thinking and has put the lives of a lot of people in jeopardy. It's better this way – to wall off the things that could shatter his control. It's a slow, nigh-torturous lesson – to realize know that any moment he could lose control, he could do something irreversible.

He doesn't need any more reminders. Shiro's terrified face flashes every time he closes his eyes.

It's fine. It's okay. It has to be.

He has to be okay with this distance.

He can't ask for more. He doesn't have the right.

* * *

There are moments, where he sits on the ground by the door, still carefully watching every breath Shiro takes in his sleep, still telling himself _Shiro's alive, Shiro's real, Shiro's not dead, I haven't killed him, I haven't killed him,_ still allowing himself to be weak enough, or strong enough, to remember the almost-idyllic memories, soft touches and forehead kisses and bright-eyed laughter in filters of mauve and gold – in moments where he lets the memories distract him, lets the fleeting happiness of those days reclaim whatever warmth was left in him, in those seconds where he doesn't notice the things around except at the trail end of a fleeting dream, he feels like Shiro's watching him.

Of course, Shiro still spends more time asleep than awake – but he's getting more and more lucid, can sit up longer, talk longer, long enough for him to look around and ask _Where's Keith_ and long enough for Keith to stand there, hidden in the doorway, back pressed against the wall and just—

Listening to his voice. Hearing it again. Every echo slithering through and up his ear and it takes everything in him and more to keep himself quiet, stifle the need to call his name and push his way to the front until he can feel, until he can place his hands around him, convince himself that this is real - that Shiro is real - and hold him close.

Luckily, the team – namely Allura and Pidge – somehow knew what to say in response to the question. Security checks and rounds and circling about warp storms and great attractors. They were constantly moving through space, shuttling to one planetoid after the other as Allura continues to reach out to rebel planets using the Blue Lion's navigation system, all the while evading Galra scouting parties and reserving booster fuels. They kept their energy use low, kept communication to a minimum, lights off.

The Black Lion pilots itself, doesn't need Keith's input, and it seems to have understood the situation, settling in the center of their convoy, protected on all sides. Keith settles inside, keeping guard, watching over Shiro.

They settle on a small moon, just outside the ring of a dead planet and the nearest star was somewhere in the millionths of a parsec from their position. They settled down south, away from direct light, tilting the temperature down to a degree on the more uncomfortable side. Still, it's enough for them to get some sleep, to do stock check of the emergency rations that Shiro had once wanted placed in every Lion's cockpit. Looking back, it had been very lucky of them to have Shiro onboard – to have someone who knew how to survive having their backs. They wouldn't be here if it weren't for him.

Keith wouldn't be here if it weren't for him.

"He's been asking for you." A voice greets him. It's usually loaded on energy and fire, with a witty remark just waiting to be let loose. Lance is stoic – almost quiet. Keith starts a bit, surprised, before settling down, turning his head away from the other Paladin. "He's worried about you, Keith."

Keith bites his lip, resting his forehead against the metal of the cockpit door. It's cold under his skin, but he's dealt with colder and closes his eyes, hoping Lance would just leave him alone.

"I'm fine." He answers, and he knows it's not the right one if the sigh he receives in response is any indication. "I am, Lance."

"No, you're not." The other prods, walking up to him and crossing his arms. The cockpit doors open slightly at his approach, and Keith watches Lance turn his head, probably to take a peek on Shiro. Keith doesn't know what to make of the emotion in the other's eyes – bright, wide-eyed, _gentle_ – but it feels like bile and dirt and he feels _disgusted_ with himself for thinking so. This was Lance, this was a…friend. A brother.

"You know," Lance begins, voice smaller than Keith's ever heard it before. The Paladin breathes deep, uncrossing his arms, head still turned to the cockpit, as he continues. "You can only keep so many things to yourself until you explode. There's no telling what's in store for us, Keith. Nothing."

It's not like Lance needs to tell him for Keith to get that. He knows all about lights at the end of a tunnel, and no way of knowing if he's still running on solid ground. Look up too many times and too long at a time and you end up missing the final step off a cliff's edge.

Lance makes a sound, a sort of sucked in sound that sounds almost sardonic, if not for the gentleness of his eyes. "You remember the first time all this started? All it took was me realizing it was you in the middle of it all and suddenly I was sixteen and desperate to surpass you for taking the golden boy's attention all the time."

Keith remembers. He doesn't remember Lance from before, only had eyes for the dark-haired, star-eyed man who was kind enough, gentle enough to reach out to a boy who spent too long a time in an orphanage, but he can remember Lance from after. He can still see it, clear as day – or night – and can still remember each breath he took to keep himself standing when he burst into that room and found Shiro after so _long._ "I do."

Lance shakes his head, a corner of his lips up. "All I wanted that time was to get one up on you, _just once_ , and suddenly there were Blue Lions and ancient technology and scary princesses and a war on top of that."

His voice falls to a whisper - breaks on the last word, and Keith raises his head as Lance raises a hand to wipe at his eyes. "It almost feels like another life."

"Lance—" Keith starts, wanting to…what? Stand, put a hand on Lance's shoulder and grip it hard enough to bruise? Tell him that he understands, more than anyone else, how he feels?

The other shakes his head, giving him a wide smile that was full of teeth, only a shadow of that light reaching his eyes. "I just…wanna make it clear that," Lance clears his throat, "we've got no idea what's waiting for us. Tomorrow, we could finally be in our own solar system, or we'd end up gunned down by Galra battleships. Nothing's certain, Keith, and we can only keep shit to ourselves for so long before we run out of second chances."

Keith doesn't miss the insinuation – one more chance, a second one, in a line of finite chances – and he doesn't miss the dead serious look in the other's eyes. The image of Lance, tinged in the blue-grey light of the nearby planet ring, eyes that have seen too much – done too much – and, it's like looking in the mirror, seeing your own reflection in a pool of your own blood and looking up and wondering—

 _When did we grow up?_

"I've done too much, Lance." Keith confesses. Hoarsely. "Everything is red."

Lance's gaze is tired, resigned, exhausted — but his words are honest, determined. "They don't have to be, Keith."

He grimaces, the words spat out instead of spoken. "I'm not fit for anything, Lance. I almost killed him. I had the sword up and ready to strike him down and, _God,_ Lance, you should have seen his eyes. He was so goddamn afraid and I was ready to put him down and—"

He chokes on the last word and gasp-sobs air in. Lance's eyes are wide, shocked, but they don't hold the disgust and the fear Keith expected them to.

"It's what he would have wanted you to do, you know that. Shiro was willing to be the sacrifice. He's only regret was that it had to be you that had to hold the knife."

Keith turns away, clutching at his chest, feeling the scar across his cheek, just breathing — away from the lack of judgment from Lance's voice, away from anything that tried to lessen the guilt he was drowning in.

"It's not your fault, Keith." Lance continued, and Keith could hear the way his voice shook, ever so softly, so minutely. "You have to believe that. Don't let it fester and consume you. Don't let this be a mistake, Keith. Shiro will never think of it as your fault. I know that, I can bet on that. Don't beat yourself like this."

Keith turns to him—

And finds—

The hauntedness in their eyes, the exhaustion painted in the hollowness under them, in the ghosts that kept them awake at night, in the crushing realization of what people - living things - what the world actually is.

When did they become full-fledged soldiers?

"Talk to him, let him know. He won't believe anyone else. Only you."

"Believe what?" Keith spat. "Believe that I'm just a mistake waiting to happen? Just another fuck-up in the making? Haven't I done enough damage, Lance?"

The other shakes his head, stares too strongly at Keith—

"No, not that. Never that. He needs to see it, for him to believe it. He needs to know that you forgive him."

Keith's lip curl into a mocking grimace. "Forgive him for taking the blame for my mistakes? Forgive him for suffering the price of the choice I had to make?

"Forgive him for not being able to save you, Keith."

And—

It's just—so typical, so fucking typical of Shiro to be like that — typical like ugly, typical like the creeping, choking doubt and regret that he can barely keep shut—

"Just think about it, Keith, before it's too late," Lance ended, walking up to him and reaching a hand out. Keith stares at it, biting his lip, mulling the words over, before taking the hand and being pulled to his feet and—

To his surprise—

Lance pulls him close and hugs him hard. It's surprising – still is, even after the months of animosity had faded and turned to a friendly rivalry, a comfortable exchange of wit and spite that held no venom, just to amuse the rest of the team, far closer than they had been with each other at the start – even after all the blood and fire, to feel Lance this close and feel his arms tight around Keith and, God, his own arms are wrapping back, just as tight, just as heartbreakingly tender.

The other Paladin eases himself out of Keith's arms, eyes shining and lips bunching up as if to say something and all Keith could do was just give him a shaky smile. "I'll be okay, Lance."

And it takes everything in him to say the next few words out, but he does. "You're my family. I know you'll always have my back, and I'll always have yours."

And the truth is too vulnerable, too honest, too bare and far too easy for the world and life to shred into strips, to crush into the very dirt and to infect it until all that remains is a distorted ruin of what's no longer there—

But the truth—sometimes, it's the only thing that can keep people going. Sometimes, it's the only thing that's enough.

Lance blinks once – twice – before nodding, sharply turning away and walking towards the exit and Keith pretends not to notice him raising a hand to wipe at his eyes. Keith's face screws up, his chest tightening, wondering if Lance will be okay, but he knows he'll be – that they'll all be okay. They had each other – they didn't have to be alone and they'll learn to stand up again.

It's just the cycle of life, isn't it? Fall and rise, repeat and rinse. Hurtle towards one direction and you either end up circling back or hitting the end so hard you end up thrown in reverse—

Doesn't matter if the way is forward or backward, as long as it's not stone-still in the middle while the universe and the stars coming rushing by, and you're left standing at the precipice waiting for the stars to evaporate.

It's a lesson to be learned, and Keith realizes the shortsightedness that had been plaguing him since the clone facility.

"Lance is right, though," A low, careful voice cuts through his thoughts and Keith turns, wide-eyed, as Shiro sits up and gives him a small smile. "Hello, Keith."

It's the same phrase that the other Shiro had said, the one under Haggar's magic, the one that had been all too willing to hurt him, to kill him. Keith's hand rises to his cheek, to the scar, before he even realizes what he's done.

Shiro's eyes widen — locked onto the scar — and any question about remembering, if the transition from spirit to bone had changed anything, had made Shiro forget anything, they all flew out the window as guilt flashed in his eyes and he ducked his head, silver hair unable to hide the devastation across his features.

"I thought I was going crazy when I kept remembering that," Shiro admits - in the tense silence - words bitten out like it pained him to do so. Keith holds a hand out to the metal door, steadying himself, unsure if he can rely on his legs right now. "I thought it was all an insane dream. There was no way I'd hurt you like that, no way in hell I'd do that to you, of all people."

Keith's eyes sting, recalling every slash of the cerise blade, every punch in his gut - up his chin and across his face - how each blow had his vision disappearing into too-bright, too-dark hues of black and white, how every second he tried to stand, tried to find the strength to move his limbs, Shiro was there - ready to beat him into the dirt; how each line of instinct in his body told him to run, to flee - there was no forgiveness, no mercy, in every laser-bright bite of Shiro's sword - and this was no hallway brawl, but a fight to the death.

Shiro's kind smile, the scent of cedar pressed against Keith's nose, the warmth of Shiro's arms around him interspersed with the utter hatred in crimson-tinged eyes and the suffocating thought of failure, of how many times he's failed over and over.

— and the finality, the dead-end, no more lines to follow, raising a blade, staring into the _human_ , fear-stricken eyes of Shiro and weighing the odds, the price, the idea of what it means to be a hero - to be a defender - to protect people—

To save one person meant not being able to save another, and how far Keith was willing to go to pay that price.

Shiro's eyes, when he opens them, under the glimmer of the planet's ring, are wracked in despair and guilt as they map over Keith's face - over the scar across his cheek, the bruise up his chin and across his face—

"God, Keith—" Shiro grits out, bone-weary and wholly exhausted, and Keith has to stop himself — has to push himself against the door and stop himself from crossing the distance and burying himself against Shiro's side, reaching out for the part of him that had been missing for so long, it threatened to drown him— "I'm a monster. I'm a goddamn monster. I'm a fucking monster."

And Keith sees the self-deprecation and the regret and the ugliness of knowing what he's done, it's all there, in splotches across Shiro's face, like blood-red paint and black ink, reminding him on what he's lost and what he's about to lose _again—_

The realization moves Keith forward, the steel clanging under his boots with each step, until Shiro is raising his head, just in time as Keith steps into his space, rears his fist back and punches him. The force of it - the resounding slap of skin against skin - has Shiro's head turned to the side, surprise overtaking the guilt and the pain and the fear for a moment, the slightly growing soreness in Keith's knuckles barely noticeable, his hearing shot, the air between them frozen—

Before Keith takes Shiro's face in his hands again and angles them to him, to meet his and just—

"I'm the monster, Shiro." His words are bullets, biting deep into the surprise. Shiro's eyes are unyielding but bare, and Keith can see everything - not a single emotion is hidden as the words sink in.

"No, Keith, you're not a monster. If anything, the monster here—"

Keith presses his thumb against Shiro's lips, silencing him. It's enough — to hear Shiro tell him that, tell him he's not a monster. It's enough. He gives the man a watery smile. "You're broken, Shiro, but you're not a monster. You were controlled, but you're not a monster."

He raises his other hand to push the silver hair away from Shiro's eyes. God, he's so beautiful. A gleaming sunrise, painting the sky in a multitude of colors — scarlet and indigo, azure and rose-gold. Keith had been too willing to end this. He blinks fast, doesn't want Shiro to see him like this.

"You were lost and hurt and abandoned, Shiro, but you're not a monster. It's not your fault."

Shiro opens his mouth, shakes his head but Keith holds him steady and reaches out with his free hand to hold the other's hand, laces their fingers together. "Say it, Shiro. Say it to me. It's not my fault."

"It's not—" Shiro starts, but his lips tremble, and his brows furrow and Keith sees the pain, the ugliness rearing its head at Shiro—"I can't say it, Keith. I c—"

"Yes, you can. You _can_ ," He presses his index finger against Shiro's temple, his thumb caressing the line of his jaw. He squeezes the hand in his, and he feels Shiro's pulse under his skin. Alive. "You are so much more than what you think you are, Shiro. You have no idea how much you mean to us. To me. Say it back to me. It's not my fault."

Shiro looks at him - with a gaze that could cut through steel and stone, from under his lashes and into Keith's eyes and his insides are twisting themselves, unsettled at the ferocity of the emotion - bright-hot and electric - and the understanding and the faith and the too-much warmth and too-much brightness, like a lighthouse in your face, the sunlight cutting through the darkness, a full force of a newborn star and Keith sees the doubt, the eclipsing shadow that threatened to pull the rug from under him and, _God,_ Keith knows - he knows how that feels, how suffocating it can feel, how the waters rush at you as you try to keep yourself above the water, fear powering you upwards and the erratic terror of waiting for when something pulls you back under and—Shiro swallows, and his voice is barely above a whisper, so low and so quiet and so small but blindingly true. "It's not my fault."

"I know." Keith answers, mirrors the words his mother had said, and the half-doubts and the questions still lingering in Shiro's eyes in the aftermath of his confession, the poison of self-loathing and regret still slithering in slivers and snippets, they ease when Keith's words fill the silence, when they see the belief - the total faith - in those words. _I'm never giving up on you. Never again._

"I heard you, in there," Shiro starts, just as quietly, raising his head to look at Keith. He had bowed over, supine, and only Keith's hand on his face kept him up. "When you told me you love me, I heard you. No one could hear me, and I couldn't hear anything but I _heard_ you."

And Keith expects embarrassment to flood his cheeks, for the self-consciousness to sweep through every crevice of his being. He expects the iron-clad gates of his walls to close, shut, locking everything and everyone out.

Yet, though his cheeks do feel warm, and he does take note of the tension of his ears, everything else is eclipsed by the liquid gleam of Shiro's eyes, the blown-out look of wonder, and the almost-disbelief trailing the edges of his lips.

 _It's always you._

Only that's not the whole story, is it? Sure, he used to be reckless, because he set the value of his life a hell of a lot lower than that of anyone around him, because he thought it was tainted to begin with. And he still kind of feels that way, now that he knows for a fact that it's tainted for good.

And, sure, maybe it's not like he asked for this. It's not like this was another catastrophe of his own making, another shot in the dark that ended with more blood on the floor than intended. It's not like this was an overestimation of his own capacities combined with the usual undervaluation of his own existence. It's not like this was something he leapt into without looking, because he wanted to, or felt inclined, or didn't care. It's not like he ever signed up for any part of this without being fucking coerced with the thought of losing everything important to him.

And maybe it looks just like a long list of pigheadedness-borne stupidity, but it's not. Not just for now, but as a whole. It's not.

He's here, standing in front of Shiro, with a scar across his face and body too bruised to do anything effective, maybe even an explosive shrapnel high up somewhere he's not aware, and less blood inside him than out so that other people didn't have to be.

So that Shiro can still keep on fighting his place. So that Pidge wouldn't have to lie to her brother about being okay, about having no nightmares. So that the relentless, destructive, toxic hands of war wouldn't have to reach out further and further, pulling more people in, twisting and infecting them until all that's left is cannon fodder.

Shiro's eyes are so bare, so open and Keith can't do anything but press their foreheads together and breathe his scent in. "Say it back to me."

Keith opens his eyes, the ends of Shiro's words trailing in his ears. The other's face is determined, brows set in a concerned line, and he looks so much like his old self - like the Shiro that had fought with them from the start, the Shiro that had been with him from the beginning—

Keith stands back up, lips mouthing unspoken words. Shiro chases after him, raises his free hand to place his fingers against Keith's cheek, in a mirror of his own action, but Keith sees the awkward movement of the right limb, the price at the end of Keith's gamble and the _bile_ creeps—

"Look at me, Keith. Look at me in the eye, not my arm." Shiro's voice asks for no opposition, commanding, the baritone edged. Keith can't do anything else but follow, looking into taupe eyes he's known for so long, as long as he knew himself. "Say it back to me, Keith. It's not my fault."

The right arm is distinct in the shadows, the lack of the alien steel of the Galra made all the more distinct. It was a sight branded into Keith's mind, stitched into his soul as a reminder, forever, of what he's had to do—

"Keith," His name on Shiro's lips is fragile, bordering on hope, in unceasing faith - reminiscent of a million stolen moments, in empty training rooms and on a lumpy mattress in an abandoned house and in the arms of the man he loved and Keith swallows a weight the size of a planet in his throat as he looks back up to taupe and mauve, gold and ochre. "I hurt you but it's not my fault. You hurt me but it's not your fault. Say it back to me. It's not my fault."

His lips part, aching to move, to say the words, held back only by the crippling disbelief, the distrust, the apprehension, the maddening fear that he'll never be able to move on and let go—

Shiro leans down, without breaking eye contact, to softly kiss the knuckles of the hand he used to punch him. "Say it back to me, Keith."

"It's not-It's not," His voice breaks. His breath hitches. He continues. "It's not my fault."

The proud, delicate, shaky smile Shiro sends his way drives the words down and—"I know, Keith. I know."

His hands move of their own accord, to feel Shiro's temple against his palm, his thumb tracing the hollow under Shiro's eyes, and Shiro breathes the words instead of saying them, ghosting across his skin—"It's not your fault, and I'll keep saying it. Everyday. For as long as you need to hear it."

And Keith's throat is too tight, his eyes are too itchy and his hands are trembling but Keith's lips are still moving, still chasing after that final train, remembering the promises he's forgotten — the one he made long ago, standing amongst the crowd, watching Shiro smile and nod and speak to a dozen reporters and a hundred cameras, and finding Keith's eyes in the crowd and that tight-lipped smile just for him—

"I love you." He says, blurts out. Without preamble, without volition. Too late to take back. Too late to pretend it was anything but the soul-shaking admission of a secret he's kept so long. Too late for regrets.

Shiro smiles—goddamn soft, and tender and comforting like a dawnstar—

—and curls his hand above the back of Keith's neck, pulls him down softly—

And Keith can only stare and part his lips, falling into Shiro's open arms and against him, as warm breath fans the skin above his lips.

"I love you, too."

And Shiro's lips—and Keith's—over one another's. Searing, fire. Warm, sun. Arcing, light. It's not even just the touch of Shiro's lips — the same lips that had painted the walls of his deepest, darkest secrets — or the but also the touch of Shiro's hand on his cheek, the graze of Shiro's nose against his—? Is it supposed to feel that warm, that intoxicating? Keith doesn't know, he can't find it in him to care to know because his lips are parted open and there's nothing but infinite white light and lax muscles, and he's half-fallen on top of Shiro, his arm around Shiro's neck while the other threads through the other's hair and—

It's just—the heat, burgeoning and suffusing, sparking like a trigger to a dynamite ready to explode like a supernova, and it's just—

Every nerve in his body is set aflame, reactive, corded lightning snapping at the surroundings.

Every thought he's had had gone, away, disappeared, fading into the back of his mind where they can't wrestle control from him.

Every breath he has is stolen, gasped out in the spaces - the minute seconds where Shiro parts from him, in the sharply-breathed in air, before Shiro leans down _this_ time and—

The flare of fucking heat in Shiro's eyes makes Keith's guts tighten up until he feels the force of it trembling out through the tips of his fingers—how is that possible?

He's leaning up, and Shiro's leaning down, and God, it was just—it's just fucking inevitable; it's gravity and magnetics and equal and opposite forces; and he'd be stupid to try to pick a fight with physics.

And he's been afraid — that all this time, from the moment Voltron happened, it had been nothing more than survival. Nothing more than natural selection and breathing, action-reaction. No intellect behind it, no overpowering rationale and sentience to it. That what he's been looking for had long gone, long disappeared the moment Keith watched Shiro take that step aboard the space shuttle. Afraid that there had been nothing waiting at the finish line — that there was no finish line, just an infinite road of fighting and bleeding and picking yourself up even after the blood had coagulated.

Shiro's mouth seals over his, and if this is the point—the warmth and the safety and the all-over-tingles of pleasure coalescing into thicker lines like lightning, the neverending promise of safety, the harbors where the waters are still, the almost cyclical ripple of the sand across the expanse of russet dunes against a mauve sunset, the unyielding vow to be here, forever, never letting go, the undeniable truth of what it means to be here, to be alive, to live—if this is what people are looking for—

It all makes so much fucking sense.

* * *

There are a million questions — what do we do next, what happens to Voltron, what about Lotor and Haggar — so many of them, bumbling after the other, thrown across the campfire on the days where they could breathe outside the Lions without the need of their helmets, where they're settled against each other, warm, alive, breathing—

And Keith looks around, just watches the way Allura tries to stop the grin from forming as Lance does something stupid with his face, or the way Pidge and Hunk talk excitedly at passing comets and meteors overhead - amidst a cloud of starlight and nebulaic glimmer - or the warmth of Yorak sleeping on his lap, his mother's small smile thrown his way, or the feeling of Shiro's fingers in his hair, the way the taupe-eyed man's smile grows childish, child _like_ and utterly charming, fascinated at the length of Keith's hair—

So many questions, so many errant thoughts, still too many fears to assuage and too many secrets to uncover, not just with the war and Lotor, but with him and Shiro and where their relationship is headed—

Thing is—

He doesn't feel anxious. He doesn't feel like he's walking on a tightrope where a single breath in the wrong direction could mean his fall. There's nothing but possibility and hope and just—faith—for the future, for what's in store for them.

The nightmares still exist, the fears still pop up. The ugly visage of regret still rears its head at him. None of that will ever disappear — too ingrained for them to just up and vanish, but Shiro's hand in his keeps the worst of it at bay, the same way his own hand keeps Shiro grounded, certain in the realization that he's finally alive, finally relearning what it means to live—

Lance was right. There was no telling what tomorrow had in store for them. They had to make the most of today, of this time, of now. This second chance he'll never waste again.

"Hey, look at that!" Pidge exclaims, pointing to a star off the horizon, far brighter than the rest. It's still dark, this side of the moon away from the nearest star, and Keith doesn't have to squint to spot the brighter one from the rest in the backdrop.

Shiro inches closer, and wraps his arm around Keith's waist, sets his temple against Keith's shoulder. It's almost reactive, almost instinctual how Keith places his arm around Shiro's waist and laces their fingers together, how he presses his own cheek against the silver-white hair.

"Ah, if I'm not mistaken, that is Tatrit tan Tamasna," Allura answers, arms over her folded knees as she, too, looked up. The star twinkled and shined, far brighter and closer than most. "Your people would have called it the star of the desert, if I recall correctly, and if you imagine it in reverse, it will resemble a tail of a four-legged animal…"

"Polaris," Pidge says - at first, quietly - then repeats it - louder and louder. "Polaris! You know what that means? We're almost home! That's the north star!"

Keith doesn't hear the excitement seeping off the rest. All he feels is the warmth of Shiro's arm around his waist, and the tremulous hope growing stronger by each passing day, punctuated by another coincidence, another sign, another play of fate as he looks at Shiro, sharing a gaze, before turning back to look at Polaris.

The press of Shiro's cheek against his shoulder and Keith turns to him, his heart oscillating from maybe to definitely to finally. The north star glimmers - another golden speck - in the sea of golden specks across taupe in Shiro's eyes. "We're almost home."

Home.

 _I'm coming home soon. I promise._

Keith smiles, leans his head close and sets it against Shiro's. Close enough to breathe in, close enough to feel, close enough for him to press his lips against the other's in the cover of darkness. Keith closes his eyes and doesn't take notice of the happy smiles on the team's faces - on his mother's lips - and the sunlight-hot warmth of joy pulsating from Yorak—

Not broken. Not weak. Not worthless.

He says it.

He knows it.

He believes it.

* * *

 **FIN**


End file.
